Paul Rudd didn’t think Steve Carell should touch his starring “Office” role with a “10-foot pole.”
Carell, who played Michael Scott for seven seasons, revealed on Tuesday’s episode of the “Good Hang with Amy Poehler” podcast that Rudd, 56, “pulled [him] aside” to warn him against doing the project.
“[He] was like, ‘Don’t do it, man. Don’t audition,’” Carell, 63, recalled. “It was like, ‘There is no way.’”
Host Amy Poehler replied, “I’m sure. Everyone was like, ‘Don’t even touch this.’”
Rudd did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
Carell, after discussing his iconic character in depth with Poehler, clarified that he did not watch more than “a minute” of the UK version of “The Office” prior to auditioning.
“[Ricky Gervais] was so good and so specific and so funny, I thought, ‘If I watch a second more, I’m just gonna go on an audition with that,’” Carell recalled. “I won’t be able to even imagine it a different way.”
He noted that “The Office” had the “lowest-testing pilot” on NBC, with “people really hat[ing]” it at the time.
The comedian confessed, “I don’t quite know how it got legs after that.”
The Golden Globe winner quipped that starring on the show between 2005 and 2011 “provide[d] a public service” as people still turn to the comedy for “safety and security.”
He gushed that Poehler’s “Parks and Recreation” is the same for viewers.
After Carell left the series, John Krasinski, Rainn Wilson and more cast members continued for two more seasons.
He gave insight into his final scenes in the mockumentary Tuesday, saying, “A year before I knew I was going to leave, I talked to [producer] Greg [Daniels] about what potentially the last arc for him would be. And I did want there to be a sense of growth for him.”
Carell thought making “the last day … not the last day” would be “an interesting way for [the Dunder Mifflin boss] to go out.”
He explained, “Everyone thinks that they’re gonna have a party for him. But he leaves the day before, because he doesn’t need it. He wants to say goodbye on his own terms.”
The Emmy nominee insisted in 2018 that a revival would be “impossible” and not “accepted” by the public the same way.
“I just don’t know how that would fly now,” he explained to Esquire at the time. “There’s a very high awareness of offensive things today — which is good, for sure. But at the same time, when you take a character like [Scott] too literally, it doesn’t really work.”
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